Winter Wheat Farmers Fear Second Year's Crop Failure

By WILLIAM ROBBINS, Special to The New York Times

Published: January 2, 1990

GARDEN PLAIN, Kan., Dec. 27—
When Lawrence Weber looked out of his pickup truck over his wheat fields at just the right angle, he could see a delicate fuzz of green bristling up out of the black earth. And what he saw was reason enough for the frown that flashed across his countenance.

Last October that growth would have spawned new hopes, offering the first signal that, with luck and good rains, those newly planted fields could produce a bountiful harvest.

At year's end it is another matter. The sparse growth is the result of a drought that has gripped the nation's most productive winter-wheat states since last summer. And now, after a siege of bitterly cold weather, the spindly tops and shallow roots have brought worries of crop losses for many of the area's farmers for the second year in a row.

Mr. Weber voiced concern that farmers could lose more than their crops, that the sparse wheat stalks and shallow rooting might cause severe damage to their land from erosion in the harsh blowing season that lies ahead, early next year.

Suffering in Families

While they are reluctant to predict a return to the financial crisis that gripped the farm country in the early 1980's, experts say there will be suffering in rural communities and in individual families.

Arlan Suderman, a crop specialist with the Kansas State University Extension Service, put the situation this way: ''The problems are beginning to strike home in our rural communities. Many farmers had operating loans last year that they couldn't repay because of crop failures. Now they are facing the threat of two in a row. Just how bad it will be depends on how much rain we get in the spring, but we're looking at a rising number of distressed farms, and that leads to stress in the homes and a lot of personal and family problems.''

The growers here farm in one of the more productive areas of a five-state region that produces most of the country's hard red winter wheat, the principal grain used for bread. Over the past year they have also been among the hardest hit in a region that suffered losses from weather damage that included drought, winterkill and wind erosion.

Fears of New Misfortunes

The results led in 1989 to the poorest crop of winter wheat in 11 years, about 1.5 billion bushels. Winter wheat is planted in early fall, lies dormant through the winter and is harvested in spring and summer.

Early signs have raised fears of a new siege of weather misfortunes. As Peter Leavitt of the Weather Services Corporation, a private consulting service in Bedford, Mass., noted the other day, little rain has fallen since September over the wheat-growing areas of the major bread-wheat states, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado and Nebraska.

On average in the wheat-growing regions of the five states, according to his calculations, only 1.38 inches of precipitation, 42 percent of the normal amount, has fallen since September. That had left young wheat plants vulnerable to extreme temperatures.

He said the reason was that a thin snow cover had helped protect plants in the northern sections, including all of Nebraska and much of Kansas. But the south-central and southwestern third of Kansas, much of eastern Colorado and all of Oklahoma and Texas, lacking protection from the snow, were exposed to the harshest blows of temperature extremes, reaching into double digits below zero as far south as Texas.

Reserve Stock Can Be Tapped

The current problems come at a time when world wheat production is expected to fall short of consumption, despite a sharp increase in acreage planted in the United States. The difference will be drawn out of reserve stocks that are already the tightest since the early 1970's.

For farmers, there has been one beneficial effect: wheat prices are running at levels higher than a year ago. Wheat is now about $4.35 a bushel, as against $4.30 a year ago at the Kansas City Board of Trade.

''Wheat is a hardy crop,'' said Mr. Suderman, the Kansas State crop specialist. ''It has the ability to surprise us, but I do believe we'll have some damage. It's hard to tell how widespread it will be, but when extreme cold hits wheat that's severely moisture-stressed, then you've really got a problem.

''The weather has already ruled out a bumper crop, Now, even if we had ideal conditions lasting from now till harvest time next spring, the best we could hope for would be an average crop.''

Here at Garden Plain, Terry Kohler gains insight into conditions through his position as manager of the Garden Plain Farmers Cooperative, which sells fertilizer and other supplies to many of its 1,100 members.

''Our farmers are already hurting, and if they don't get a decent crop this year, about a third of them are going to have to get some major refinancing.''

Among those hardest hit by last year's drought was Duane Sanders, who grows wheat and raises livestock a few miles north of Wichita. On land that normally produces about 35 bushels of wheat an acre, he harvested only seven bushels an acre last year, Mr. Sanders said.

After paying off the interest and part of the principal on last year's operating loan, he said, he found his ''net worth going in reverse,'' down $12,000 in a year.

''Now,'' he said, ''we already know we're not going to get a good crop in 1990. Only the spring rain will tell whether we get anything worth harvesting.''